Analog switching to electronic submission

In case there are any of my writer friends out there who have not yet seen the news that SF Scope broke, Analog (where my story, “Take One for the Road” will be appearing in the June issue) will be switching to Neil Clarke‘s electronic submissions system, just their sister publication, Asimov’s did several months back.

I like Neil’s submission system. It appears to be flexible enough for the publishers, while greatly simplifying the process of submissions for writers. No more trips to the post office, no more futzing with big envelopes. No more SASE’s. One factor that I’ve heard both Stan Schmidt and Sheila Williams talk about is that they can read manuscripts on their Kindle’s and no longer have to carry around stacks of paper. That makes sense for them too.

I’ve written before about how writers live for the mail. Now the only market to which I submit stories that doesn’t yet take electronic submissions is F&SF, but I think the pressure is on. And despite the fact that I won’t be going to the snail mailbox to look for rejections slips or acceptances, I’ve grown used to looking for these things in my Gmail inbox. In fact, I have a special bright red color for the editors to whom I’ve submitted and interacted with in the past so that when they send me something, it really stands out.

Of course, for people as obsessive as writers can be, there is one drawback to these electronic systems: we find ourselves constantly checking the system to see if the status of of our submission has changed.